Horse Racing- Is there any real strategy bet-wise?

[Hey_Porter]

There's a track here in Portland, and I've gone once or twice with friends just for kicks. Is there any bet that is better than others? The way it works here (and maybe everywhere, I just don't know) is you essentially buy a share of a horse. Thus, no odds are locked in, your payout depends totally on how many other people bet on the horse. There is a printed program that lists the odds of the horse to win. It seems to me, then, that the best bet is to wait until the last minute (like many do, I'm sure) and bet on the horse with the best pre-betting odds compared to the biggest pre-race payout. Am I missing something here? I generally just do exacta box bets.

[Mcot]

From my understanding a lot of horse races are capshoots since a lot of things can go wrong and ect... So it would make sense to bet on the horse with the most favorable odds as long as you don't have any inside information leading you to belive something is up with that horse or if you belive a fix is on for a horse getting a lot of action. It is also my limited understanding that there is not a lot of regulation so fixes and setup do occur. Also isnt the vig pretty high??

[Hey_Porter]

Yea, the vig is horrible. I don't do it to win, I just like going there with buddies, playing some gin in between races, and placing some wagers. Still, want to maximize what I can.

[curious123]

Not much here, see some of Bishop22's posts in the SB forum.

[sekrah]

Been around horse racing since I was 14 (now 24).

There are a couple rules that you should follow.

#1. Never bet any horse that's paying worse than even money. The combined odds of having the horse not feeling well, having an off day, jockey/trainer shenanighans, plus bad racing luck exceed 50% on every single horse. You're throwing away your money betting on even money. Infact, The horse better be pretty DAMN strong compared to the field if you're even going to take a 2-1 shot.

#2. Learn about the racing form and search the longshots (10-1 or higher) in the race and try to find something positive going in the horses favor. These positives could be: Change to a top jockey from the last race, change to a top trainer, change in distance from the last few races, a drop in class from where the horse was previously running, indications of early speed from the horse in recent races. Maybe a 2-3 month layoff from the last race could be a positive. Look 8-10 races back in the horses past performance history. Try to find a race that the horse ran in his past that might be able to compete with today's horses. Keep plugging away, you're sure to spot some 15-1 or 20-1 longshots that have something good going in there favor for todays race.

#3. Never bet a horse who just ran his best race ever his last race out. More often than not, that last career best effort was taxing on the horse physically and it'll take him a month or two to get back to that effort. This is especially true with fillies and mares. When they run career best speed figures, they'll very often stink it up next time out.

Just a couple thoughts.

[ItalianFX]

I don't know if it is a proven strategy or not, but it's something to look into it. I watched a bunch of races on TV and what I always found was that the early leader was rarely the late winner. What I always saw was that most horses that won were the horses that stayed with the pack and then made a late push at the end.

So what I would do was look for the horses that did exactly that. It took me awhile to come up with that and figure out what I was looking for on the past performances, but if you pay attention, you'll figure it out also.

My best doing this was a 20-1 shot that ended up winning.

[Bishop22]

[ QUOTE ]
There's a track here in Portland, and I've gone once or twice with friends just for kicks. Is there any bet that is better than others? The way it works here (and maybe everywhere, I just don't know) is you essentially buy a share of a horse. Thus, no odds are locked in, your payout depends totally on how many other people bet on the horse. There is a printed program that lists the odds of the horse to win. It seems to me, then, that the best bet is to wait until the last minute (like many do, I'm sure) and bet on the horse with the best pre-betting odds compared to the biggest pre-race payout. Am I missing something here? I generally just do exacta box bets.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe your approach based on program odds, while logical, will actually lose you more in the long run than picking a horse at random. The reason is that most trackmen do poor jobs of estimating a horse's chance of winning, the betting public corrects this and the final odds are actually sharper than the program line.

If you want to lose the minimum without putting out any effort, you should probably bet mid-priced horses (not the favorite, not long shots) to Win,Place or Show. It might also help to exclude the outside posts and stick to numbers 1-6. The juice in the exacta pool is higher at most tracks but if you need a higher payout to make the gambling enjoyable, than playing exacta boxes is not a bad approach.

[sekrah]

Oh I feel the need to brag a little tonight :-D

Delta # 6 $10 Win 3 $10.00
Delta # 6 $1 Trifecta 3,8,WT,2,3,4,5,7,8,WT,2,3,4,5,7,8 $40.00

Delta - Race 6

# Win Place Show
3 $65.00 $17.40 $8.20
4 . $2.60 $2.20
5 . . $11.00

$1 Trifecta 3-4-5 $1056.50


$1381 score a little bit ago.

[Valhalla1]

Howard Lederer and Michael Konik on Poker After Dark were talking about a big Korean horse betting syndicate with a computerized model who have been beating the lines in korea for mid 8 figures a year. apparently the government-run race books were still making tens of millions in vig from their action so they didn't care and allow it
horses are apparently huge over there

[Al Mirpuri]

Good news: the horses are beatable. Bad news: requires more study than poker.